News

“On ne naît pas femme: on le devient…” The Life of a Sentence, a new book edited by Bonnie Mann and Martina Ferrari, has been published by Oxford University Press.

From the publisher’s website:
“This collection of essays takes up the most famous feminist sentence ever written, Simone de Beauvoir’s ‘On ne naît pas femme: on le devient,’ finding in it a flashpoint that galvanizes feminist thinking and action in multiple dimensions. Since its publication, the sentence has inspired feminist thinking and action in many different cultural and linguistic contexts. Two entangled controversies emerge in the life of this sentence: a controversy over the practice of translation and a controversy over the nature and status of sexual difference. Variously translated into English as ‘One is not born, but rather becomes a woman’ (Parshley, 1953), ‘one is not born but rather becomes woman’ (Borde and Malovany-Chevallier, 2010), and ‘women are made, not born’ (in popular parlance), the conflict over the translation crystallizes the feminist debate over the possibilities and limitations of social construction as a theory of sexual difference. When Sheila Malovany-Chevallier and Constance Borde (contributors to this volume), translated Le Deuxième Sexe into English in 2010, their decision to alter the translation of the famous sentence by omitting the ‘a’ ignited debate that has not yet exhausted itself. The controversy over the English translation has opened a conversation about translation practices and their relation to meaning more generally, and broadens, in this volume, into an examination of the life of Beauvoir’s key sentence in other languages and political and cultural contexts as well.

The philosophers, translators, literary scholars and historian who author these essays take decidedly different positions on the meaning of the sentence in French, and thus on its correct translation in a variety of languages–but also on the meaning and salience of the question of sexual difference as it travels between languages, cultures, and political worlds.”

Beata Stawarska, Professor of Philosophy and Director of Graduate Studies, is one of of sixteen exceptional faculty members selected to receive the Fund for Faculty Excellence Award. This honor is granted in recognition of the significant impact of Dr. Stawarska’s scholarly work and enduring commitment and contribution to the University of Oregon’s shared institutional spirit of learning, intellectual inquiry, and service.

The Fund for Faculty Excellence Awards are designed to further the UO’s strategic commitment to sustain and improve academic quality and reputation by recognizing, supporting, and retaining world-class tenure-related faculty. Faculty members are nominated by their deans, recommended by a committee of former recipients, and chosen on the basis of their extraordinary talent, commitment to research, teaching, advancement of their fields, and engagement with their colleagues, helping to make the University of Oregon the venerable institution that it is.

This award may be taken as a one-time salary stipend of $20,000 or as research funds in the amount of $30,000.

A celebration of this year’s recipients will take place at a Fund for Faculty Excellence Awards reception on Thursday, October 5, from 4:30-5:30 p.m. at the Ford Alumni Center, Papé Hearth.

Beata Stawarska, Professor of Philosophy and Director of Graduate Studies, received a 2017-18 residential fellowship at the Institute of Advanced Studies, Nantes, France.

Stawarska will be working on a research project titled:

The Canon and the Critique: One Hundred Years of the Course in General Linguistics

Project description:
Thanks to its over one hundred-year-long legacy, the Cours de linguistique générale /Course in General Linguistics (1916) attributed to Ferdinand de Saussure acquired the status of an indispensable ‘Great Book’ in contemporary scholarship in the humanities. This canonical text laid out an innovative research program in modern linguistics and it led to the development of a structuralist method in other human sciences, and it therefore occupies an important role in contemporary academic scholarship and college-level pedagogy. While the Course is justifiably enshrined within the contemporary canon of ideas, recent research in Saussurean linguistics offers multiple venues for developing a critical perspective on this foundational text. This groundbreaking research conducted mainly in France has remained confined to specialised academic venues and not nearly as popular and widely accessible as the Course itself. Beata Stawarska therefore proposes to author the first critical companion to the Course in General Linguistics that would appeal to a wide, international and interdisciplinary audience in the humanities, and reflect the relevant European scholarship on the legacy and validity of the Course today. This study would examine the production, reception, and replication of the Course as an official statement of Saussure’s linguistics by examining the dominant social relations of power within European academic institutions and the role social norms play in enabling as well as constraining the establishment of true knowledge in scientific disciplines. It would therefore contribute to a better understanding of Saussure’s linguistics and its social and institutional context.

The University of Oregon Philosophy Department welcomes Camisha Russell to a tenure-track position as Assistant Professor of Philosophy beginning Fall 2017. Camisha Russell received her Ph.D. in Philosophy from Penn State University in August 2013.

Camisha Russell specializes in Critical Philosophy of Race, Ethics (esp.Bioethics), African American Philosophy, and Feminist Theory. Her first book, The Assisted Reproduction of Race: Thinking through Race as a Reproductive Technology, will be published by Indiana University Press in 2018.

Anna Cook, PhD candidate in the UO Department of Philosophy, has received a Margaret J. Wiese Graduate Research Award for 2017. Established through the Margaret J. Wiese Scholarship Endowment Fund, this grant is made to support graduate student research activities related to preserving the culture, language, and/or artifacts of northwestern Native Americans.

Andrew Dunn, Philosophy undergraduate major, was named one of the “Oregon Six” by the UO Phi Beta Kappa chapter — a really significant award, marking him as one of the very best students at the University of Oregon.

Andrew, a double-major in Philosophy and Political Science, will graduate Magna Cum Laude with a BA degree at the end of Spring 2017. Andrew recently defended an honors thesis in Philosophy titled “The Intersection of Marx and Dewey: Criticizing the Reification of Separate Public and Private Spheres.” Steven Brence was his principal advisor and Colin Koopman was his second reader.

Undergraduate philosophy major James West has received a 2017 Centurion Award for outstanding service by a student leader. Centurion Awards are given to undergraduate and graduate students for dedication and outstanding service as student leaders in the past year. To receive a Centurion Award, these students either emerged as one of the finalists being considered for other awards or stood out to selection committee members due to the depth and breadth of their contributions. On a campus of 24,000 students, being recognized in this group of 100 selected leaders is very significant.

Anna Cook, PhD candidate in the UO Department of Philosophy, was awarded a CSWS Graduate Student Research Grant for her dissertation Unable to Hear: Settler ignorance and the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The Center for the Study of Women in Society annually awards grants of up to $3,000 to UO graduate students to support their research and/or creative work on women and gender from a range of disciplines.

Steven Brence has won the Herman Faculty Achievement Award for his teaching. The Thomas F. Herman Faculty Achievement Award for Distinguished Teaching honors senior faculty members who have achieved outstanding records as teachers. The Herman Award is presented only to faculty members who have held academic rank at the University of Oregon for at least seven years, have demonstrated long-standing excellence in teaching, and have contributed significantly to student learning at the undergraduate or graduate level.

The Herman Award includes institutional recognition for teaching excellence and a permanent salary stipend. During the first year, faculty recipients receive $4,000, with annual stipends of $2,000 beginning in the second year.